Big Email Faux Pas

Oh... the horror!

Ok, Twitter is kind of new and people are getting used to the protocol or etiquette to using Twitter - I know I still am. But I can't believe people still don't understand how to use email correctly. They're out there, right? We all know them. They don't reply to all or include the original message. Some of that's understandable and not the end of the world of course - so no big deal.

But I just got an email with pretty much the worst thing you can do from a former client since we're apparently still on their list (which is fine, I'm not griping about that but trying to explain a point). It was from a local Chamber of Commerce (who had a regime change and which is why they're no longer our client - they tend to use their own people) and it was an email where the person was introducing themselves to all the members. What they did was, first of all, send a regular email but did not blind carbon copy everyone. You can see like over 100 email addresses on the email. And then for some reason, the email had to be resent and instead of going into the sent folder and doing a resend, the person forwarded it and included all the email addresses again.

So not only do you feel like the amount of spam you get is going to increase, you have to scroll way down in the email to see what this person wants to say. By the time you get to that point, you really don't care.

In my communications classes in college, this was called "noise". Anything that gets in the way of communication is noise. So to quit this ranting and get to my point, what noise is in your web communications? Was your website made in the 90s and still have a "splash page" or Flash intro? That's sometimes appropriate now, but very rarely and the sites that are doing it probably really questioned if they should or not.

What other noise is there? How about no clear way to contact your company? Is your phone number buried? Is there no email address listed on your site? Does the contact us form not work anymore? People know that if you're hard to communicate with, they'd rather move on to your competition.

So think about your website and try to eliminate some noise. Making things simpler is usually better. We hear that a lot when people come in for a website redesign. They want things simpler, more professional and easier to use. You can't accomplish that by adding things (well, in some cases) but we're usually taking things away, cleaning things up and then putting our talented design team to work.

If you're ready for your website to do great things, hand it over to the professionals. We've come up with great ideas for clients who have seen their website go from generating no business to generating practically all their business. It's not magic - just what we do.

And getting back to the horrible email that was sent out... we're now turning a lot of clients of ours to professional services like Constant Contact who can manage large lists and give you some amazing stats. It's so much better than getting people angry with your emails.

-Tony

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